The subject matter disclosed herein relates to cooling of electronic components. More specifically, the subject disclosure relates to heat sink configurations for packaged electronics.
To facilitate packaging, electronics devices are typically contained within rectangular enclosures. The electronics devices contained in the rectangular enclosures may be air-cooled or liquid-cooled depending on the application. These rectangular enclosures are typically cooled using externally-located fans and linear heat sinks that are readily compatible with the rectangular enclosures. Power conversion electronics in particular are typically packaged on a rectangular cold-plate, with a high-density fin structure placed below heat dissipating components to transfer thermal energy away from the components. In typical air-cooled systems, a fan, which is separate from and external to the heat sink structure, is used to provide motive force to drive airflow through the fin structure of the heat sink to carry thermal energy away from the heat sink and the electronics components. In general, as the blades of a blower/fan rotate, they perform work on the airflow, thereby generating a total gauge pressure consisting of a static pressure and dynamic pressure component. A portion of the dynamic pressure is converted to static pressure as the airflow leaves the rotating blades and passes through a diffuser. The increased static pressure at the exit of the blower and diffuser drives flow into the channels of the heat sink, between the fins. Flow passes through the channels from the high pressure at the channel inlet to a low pressure at the channel exit. The pressure drop in each channel is typically the same, since the length and width of each channel and the mass flow in each channel is typically the same since the driving static pressure gradient is the same for all channels. The gauge pressure downstream from the exit of the channels is taken to be the reference pressure (zero).